"Well, I beg your pardon, dear Tommy," he replied; "I should be the last to hurry you, I am sure; after all the great things that you have done for us. But I do want you to be about again, for a lot of reasons; if it were only to canvass Larkmount, before they forget your exploit, and before that very dainty colour has time to get spoilt. All the Larkmount females will be in love with you; and everything is driven by the thimble there. The Rads are going to be fools enough, I hear, to bring forward an oily fellow, fifty years old, pitted with the small-pox, and with stubby black hair, against your soft carmine, and ambrosial curls. And another thing I forgot to tell you, Counterpagne will be here to-morrow, or the next day; and he is such an awful stick over the wine. He thinks himself wronged, with less than two hours of it; and what I shall do with him, when the Professor is gone, surpasses my imagination. He never says anything, except what he has read in the papers of the morning; and whatever they have said, he repeats word for word, for he has got a tremendous memory. And he does it all the same, if he has happened to get hold of a Radical journal, before the sound doctrine; whichever side he gets first, he swallows; and his stubbornness, pegs him fast to it; and whatever the other side says is therefore all rubbish, and rot, and roguery. His temper is none of the best; and that makes it so much harder to get on with him." "But what can you do with him, all day long, if he is that sort of fellow?" I asked; "surely he must be even worse, before he has read anything at all; because he must want you, to settle his mind." "Not at all; he would resent it deeply. He must have a thing in type, and take it in slowly, before his opinion--as he calls it--can be formed. And then, I am relieved of him for several hours, and am only too glad to be out of the way, while he marches all over the gardens, and shrubberies, and even the chase--as he calls the home-farm--for hours of spooning with poor Laura." "What an atrocious thing to do!" I cried, feeling indignation almost lift me from the couch. "It is bad enough to spoil your evenings; but to ruin all her mornings is ten thousand times worse. How can you bring yourself to allow it?"